As the song goes, what a difference a day makes…..

Or in our case, what a difference a day/three days (since Saturday) / eight months / a year …makes.

This may take some thinking back, or in some people’s cases, pretending to think back, to what happened in the ground against Millwall that cold January day, because by then they weren’t bothering to go….

If you can remember back to our game against the EFL Family Club of the Year 2017-18 season, you will know what I mean. The game, when in traditional “non football” fashion they kicked us off the park in the 1st half and Cooper got sent off for tackling in retribution. We went 2 nil down and everyone thought all was lost. It may have been De Boek’s first game but it really did look like (pardon the pun) putting the lambs to the lions for slaughter. We came out in the second half and Lasogga looked like a man possessed. Both he and Roofe ran their little socks off and we got back to 3-2. But we couldn’t hold out with just the 10 men and they equalised with seconds of normal time to go. By this time, Lasogga looking like a man possessed… by three Christmas dinners….. had got replaced by Shaughnessy (remember him?) and we had nothing left in the cupboard. Had the South Stand not time wasted by not giving the ball back, we could have held onto a draw, but we lost it in the 93rd minute. I came out of that game wondering why we couldn’t have played like that all season.

For the first few months of this season, I knew why. We always had it in us, we just needed the right man in charge. Granted we no longer have the Pennington, Cibicki, Anita type players anymore, but the whole ethos has changed under Bielsa – and what a difference!

It has been a nail biting run in. My prediction of “Promoted in February” would have been a nailed on dead cert had we not suffered an injury crisis that made Arsene Wenger’s post Christmas Arsenal team look positively indestructible. If all our players had stayed fit, or even 50% of our players been fit, we would have been promoted 3 weeks ago. Sadly our first team haven’t actually played at full strength since August Bank Holiday weekend. But even with that, up till last Saturday we were still 3rd, and Birmingham weren’t really that good, we just never got going and we’ve been short on luck.

3rd – with massive injury issues and still people were whingeing that we aren’t good enough. Like they have been all season really. A season which has seen us play some of the most dominant football I have seen in the last 15 years.  This time last year, you would have taken someone’s arm off to be in this position, but this season – we just aren’t good enough???? Fickle fickle fickle.

In reply to someone’s comments earlier this week, yes, we are all entitled to an opinion. But there is a difference between just having an opinion and going off on a rant, slagging off every player under the sun ( apart from Pablo of course – he never puts a foot wrong!) and claiming that none of them are good enough to wear the shirt. There’s a difference between telling Kalvin he has put a lazy ball in and sending Ayling death threats. There’s a difference between holding your head in your hands after Roofe has missed a sitter and spending twenty minutes moaning about how sh*t Bamford is and how we should have bought a proven goal scorer like Nugent or Forestieri in January. There’s a difference between having a pop at Pablo for a corner that doesn’t get past the first man and telling Alioski that he is a cheating, diving  waster relentlessly throughout the whole game. There is a difference between staying steadfast behind the team, win, lose or draw and walking off in disgust with ten minutes to go.

No point arguing with some though eh?

What a difference a day makes. 24 hours ago, we were on our way back from the wrong side of the Pennines, hoping and dreaming that this time tonight, it would all be back in our hands. And here it is. 5 more games to go. Just hold your nerve and get behind the team. PLEASE.

On, on, on.

(the great Miss Ruth Lee Jones courtesy of google images)